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If you've ever thought that billionaire-owned media engage in a lot of wankery, trying to make the climate catastrophe* that their bosses are unleashing seem normal… well… 🥵
* - Today's special is a heat dome covering most of the US, breaking records that few would've imagined possible just decades ago.
@Cass_m I love the present state of search engines… I had to add "saying" to discover what it meant, as opposed to a bajillion ad results offering travel and tourism. 
Kia Orana as well, and may positive life energy surround you and the chaos from the Decade of the Gremlin stay far away. 
@MostlyHarmless @Cass_m Best explanation I've seen for why you can't spell "FaiL" without ai: https://mastodon.cloud/@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io/116210832547532696
@Soozcat I hope I'm right too, but I'm not sure. I very well may be relying too much on history completing another circle, back to the solidarity born out of the days of The Jungle, instead of spiraling down a la the Roman Republic.
(Not to mention it may be self-serving bias to believe that almost everyone is capable of redemption. A big part of how I try to shape my life nowadays, is due to desiring very much to be better than the person I've been.)
@Soozcat For anyone who's willing to put down the toxic-waste Monster Chow
they've been gorging on, I think redemption is not only possible but ~very~ realistic. At least among the 99%, I think only a very small minority are truly so far gone they won't come back no matter what. 
We all have vermin inside of us. But we become what we feed inside of ourselves… or though it may take years, we can leave behind what we stop feeding.
(Or at least shrink it until a good stomp does the trick.)
@Soozcat I suspected I might like Serling's "speechifying" snippet at the end more than the creator's own… I did.
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-twilight-zone-1959&episode=s03e03
I don't dispute the creator's points, at all. Nor that crisis brings out people's real natures. But I don't believe the ugly sides were always there just waiting—imo, they've been carefully husbandried by billionaire media until inner vermin grew to inner monsters, making us easy to divide and conquer (by the same folks who fomented the crisis).
@PacificNic I can't speak to this (which is intriguing and I'm going to try to learn more), but inflammation is absolu-frickin'-lutely implicated in some psych disorders. (Not the least of which is that there's good evidence the "fold" survival circuit (which can be triggered by inflammation, and may even have started out that way as a response to make people rest when very sick) is tightly linked to depression.
@Soozcat To be fair, if we lived in an actual fantasy world (instead of this neofeudal Back To The Fu–err, Dark Ages– hell), women might as well be magical elves to men being dwarves.
@cass_m @dyckron To me, these two possibilities seem the most likely:
1) They were wildly, blindly overoptimistic.
2) They want a more hostile (but less able to act on it) regime.
A third possibility, which I'm afraid isn't necessarily unrealistic: They want a more hostile regime as a credible opponent. Without a credible opponent, they can't count on trillions in aid… and the war profiteers running this horror show can't collect trillions selling "defensive" bombs.
@dyckron The Unsane Clown Posse? 
(I hope it's not unwelcome; I believe wholeheartedly in my mom's "Sometimes if you can't laugh you'll cry".)
@Gustodon If you think "Swear a Loyalty Oath to the Good Us right now or you're an Evil Them" is an appropriate answer to my post, you've demonstrated beyond doubt that you refuse to seriously consider anything I say. I wish you well, and I hope some day you can find a better way to live than Good-Us-Versus-Evil-Them.
@Gustodon Sad how it always comes back to this… people (both Red and Blue) who regularly drink the billionaire-owned media cults' Good-Us-Versus-Evil-Them koolaid,
1) will never stop making excuses for horrible things their Good Us do as an Unfortunate Necessity,
2) are brainwashed into believing Evil Thems in the 99% are the Real Power running this horror show, and
3) when cornered and out of logical arguments, they accuse anyone who won't pledge allegiance to the Good Us of being an Evil Them.
@Soozcat Thank you for following along on my wild tangent.
It made a huge impression when I went back east for my mom's funeral, staying with one of my bio-brothers*… right after saying they were glad we could spend some time together, he and his then-wife and daughter plopped down in front of the TV. Because that's the normal way for people to spend time together, don'tcha know. 🥴
* - nothing against bio-brothers, it's just that personally I'm closer to my mutually-chosen ones
@Soozcat It's funny… they call fantasy and sci-fi works "escapist", but they often shine bright metaphorical lights on the reality of life.
And to me, almost everything about the way we're expected to live life nowadays SCREAMS "temporary escape from reality" at the top of its lungs. One affects the 99%'s lives far more than the other, in extremely tangible and tragic (and STOPPABLE) ways… but the recent Superb Owl parade drew hundreds of times more people than protests against the oligarchy.
@Su_G @DrALJONES Thank you; I wish I knew who to credit.
I'm pretty fond of the Peanuts and WWE analogies I posted in response to @DrALJONES as well… I hope they'll strike a chord? Or at least, be darkly amusing. 
@DrALJONES Or perhaps more aptly, less convincing than Lucy 'holding the football' for Charlie Brown. 
@Gustodon It's ALWAYS a 'crisis'. It's always 'not the right time' to demand better, but even when they win control of all three branches Democrats refuse to undo the damage. I've been watching this for decades.
@DrALJONES Thank you much. After decades of watching them make the same excuses over and over, I'm sick to death of Democrats putting on a less convincing act of trying to "fight for us"… than a WWE 'wrestler'. 
@Gustodon The independents (people who don't align with either party) already outnumber the people who say they align with Reps or Dems. Not to mention people who only choose Rep/Dem because they think they have to.
The only reason this horror show continues, is that the 99% keep listening to billionaire-owned media who tell them nothing else is possible. And keep telling them to hate/blame each other for the horrors being perpetrated on ALL of the 99% by the robber barons.
@Gustodon The Greens, among others. Or do you mean “no third party who the billionaire-owned media tell me is ‘realistic’, I.e billionaire-approved”?
